Graham lifts his damn eyebrow. “Do you ever know your coworkers, Tara?”
The way he words his question and the particular way his eyes slide across my body as if he’s trying to look deeper inside my brain to read my answer is unnerving.
I’m about to make an excuse — pull a move from Cammie by fake hearing someone call my name — but the little white alarm at the main desk buzzes and I jump in my chair.
Too much time has passed sitting across the table from the blue-eyed GQ model fake secret agent. Now it’s time to prepare for the dinner rush.
“Is that Cinderella’s midnight timer?” Graham asks, his expression back to one of playfulness.
4
“This is crazy.” After Graham followed me out of the dining room after our blackmail date, he practically demanded I give him a real date.
And so, I agreed.
I didn’t even make a fight or pretend like I wasn’t interested. I still haven’t worked out if he is mysteriously hot or scary hot, and I think deep down inside I’m curious enough to find out. Will he wine and dine me or lock me in a kidnapper van with shag carpeting and no windows?
Cammie sighs as she tugs on my hair, her fingers flying through the strands as she braids it in some kind of elaborate design. She promised my medium brown color would make me look like a feisty Katniss when she finished. “It’s romantic.”
“How exactly is getting caught snooping in his room and then blackmailed into a date romantic?”
“It sounds like the opening to a romance novel. You and the hero have an unlikely first meeting, but over time the two of you fall in love and eventually he sweeps you off your feet and takes you home where he is the prince of a lavish country. Then you’re the ruler with a house full of jewels and servants.”
She tells the story so effortlessly I have to wonder how many times she’s dreamed this scenario. “Something tells me the man with the fake shaving cream bottle in his hotel room probably isn’t a prince in a faraway country.”
“That’s okay,” Cammie ties off my hair and flops it over my shoulder. “You can let him be your king, anyway.”
“Wow, that was ridiculously corny.” She might not have the Prince Charming thing down, but she has an eye for hair. The mirror in the employee lounge is screwed to the wall, so I’m forced to distort my body into weird angles trying to see the back of it, but the delicate complicated fishtail braid is stunning.
It’s like something I always asked my mother to give me when I was a child, but we didn’t have YouTube tutorials back then and she always fumbled through, making up her own versions as she went along.
“Wow, Cammie, this looks gorgeous. Thank you.”
“Fit for a princess and future queen.”
I roll my eyes, turning away from the mirror. That’s her version of happiness not mine. “I’m pretty sure you didn’t read the blurb for this book. It’s a women’s fiction, one where the heroine works hard her entire twenties and saves up enough money to buy her own hotel by thirty-five. Then the place ends up haunted.”
Cammie laughs. “But, Tara, you can’t have a fairy tale unless you have a hero.”
“Okay then he’ll show up at her bed-and-breakfast asking for a room one dark and rainy night with his hot Scottish accent and sweep her off her thirty-six-year-old feet.”
“And then you’ll be on the way back to Scotland where you find out he’s the clan leader who traveled forward in time to find you just to make you a queen.”
I nod enthusiastically, ready with my next part of the plot. “And then the book turns into a horror because the Scottish clans were all the slaughtered in the eighteenth century.”
Cammie shakes her head pushing me on the shoulder lightly. “You are such the skeptic.”
“And you read too many romance novels.” Besides, I wouldn’t want to be a future queen, anyway. Nobody notices the constant barrage of reporters on Kate Middleton. The poor girl can’t look sideways without somebody saying she’s pregnant with twins! It has to do horrible things for a woman’s self-esteem. She probably hasn’t had a carb since the nineties.
“Well, would you settle for a man who shows up at a bed-and-breakfast you don’t own when you’re twenty-six? He doesn’t have a Scottish accent, but he does have a fake can of shaving cream.”
Cammie turns me around to face the door at the employee break room as Graham walks by. I laugh, one of those stupid cheerleaders laughs that fell out of favor senior year of high school. It’s a nervous habit and one that quite frankly should not be held against me.
“Are you ready?” Graham asks, holding his hand out.
I breathe a sigh of relief taking in his outfit. For a moment I had visions he’d show up in a tux or some other princely attire and then I would look horribly out of place in my light pink knit sweater. When he told me to dress warmly, I didn’t think any of my knee-length dresses with a pair of tights fit the description in Pelican Bay in December.
The lights from the blue-and-white Christmas trees set up in the lobby twinkle as I wave goodbye to Cammie and follow the not-a-spy, or a prince, or a time-traveling Scottish clan leader, and hopefully not a serial killer out of the bed-and-breakfast.
Cold air slaps my face as soon as the door closes. A healthy gust whips down Main Street, bringing flakes of snow and a few moldy leaves with it. Even the air smells dead as the inside of my nose freezes with each breath. I huddle deeper into my coat as we walk down the steps of the front porch.
“Where are you going?” a deep voice asks, drawing my attention from the snow-covered ground. Dwight blocks our path. Graham tries to walk right on by him but I stop to give the night manager an answer. “I have someplace I need to go.” Not an uncommon occurrence around here. “I left all the paperwork on the counter and everything set up for you. Cammie is in charge.”
“Wonderful,” Dwight scoffs. “Lucky the place didn’t burn down. And where are you going?”
“Have we met?” Graham leans back, holding his hand out for Dwight to shake, which he does with a little hesitation.
“The night manager and future owner of the bed-and-breakfast. It’s my responsibility to make sure the employees take good care of the place.” Dwight puffs out his chest but still comes across as an angry teenager.
Graham beams, his perfect white teeth exposed in a big a smile. Even though it’s wide and bright, it looks fake and a little scary. One point for a serial killer. “Then you must be extremely happy with Tara’s performance. The place is amazing.”
Dwight grunts, nodding his head in my direction. “Just make sure you’re here in the morning ready to take over.”
I resist the urge to salute him as a commanding officer and make a sarcastic comment. “See you then.”
I wait a second and watch his retreating back as he walks up the steps of the bed-and-breakfast.
“He’s a fun fellow, huh?” Graham asks when the two of us pick up our pace again.
“He’s something.” What, I haven’t quite figured out yet.
Dwight did have a good point. Graham never answered me about where we are going. We walked out the front doors and turned onto the main sidewalk in front of the bed-and-breakfast, away from the parking lot for guests. It can’t be too far because without a car we’ll freeze.
I shove my hands deep into my pockets doing everything possible to keep my fingertips warm. “It’s not far is it?”
Graham wraps his arm around my shoulders, turning the moment tender and familiar as if we’ve walked this path together a hundred times. Rather than shy away, I lean into the embrace, hoping to steal some of his body warmth or at the least use him as a wind block from the gusts that beat against us.
He laughs. “I wanted to take you to the nicest place in Pelican Bay, but I asked and that is apparently the bed-and-breakfast.”
I laugh, expecting for a moment for us to turn around and head back to my workplace for dinner, but we keep walking straight. It’s the only fine dining establishment
in town so I have no idea where we’re going.
“I figure you’re there enough, so I went to the second-best place.”
What would people in town consider the second-best place? There aren’t many options. “The bakery?”
Graham’s steps falter, but just for a second as if he’s an engine that missed a click. “That place is a little too friendly.”
He says “too friendly” as if that is a bad thing. The bakery is one of my favorite parts of Pelican Bay. Everyone knows everybody else and wouldn’t waste a second giving you a helping hand. Even the color scheme is happy.
We stop much quicker than the steps it would require to get to the bakery, which is a good thing because my nose has already started to complain the frostbite will take it right off my face. Graham holds the door open, stepping back and letting me enter the diner first.
One point for a gentleman.
Graham is right. I have spent too much time at the bed-and-breakfast the last six months and not enough in the rest of Pelican Bay. Besides the occasional trip to the bakery for something hot to drink or one of her handmade cookies, I haven’t gone out much. Ice cream by the beach every Friday this summer does not make me a social diva.
I skim the large diner’s menu and ultimately decide on the club sandwich and a coke, which I order from a wonderful waitress. Trish, her name is etched into her name tag that’s tilted a little to the side on the upper left of her polo shirt.
“Do you want dessert?” Graham asks before she can leave our table with our orders.
“How can I know this early?” Is it a big club or small club? Will I like it enough to eat the whole thing or will it only be so so-so in a half? You can’t decide until you’ve had the club in front of you and take the first bite.
My date shakes his head as if he’s bewildered about whether or not I decide I’m going to eat a dessert in forty-five minutes. “Give us one of those lava cake things,” he says, pointing to the concoction on the back of the menu that looks like a chunk of brownie with ice cream and chocolate syrup drizzled over top.
It looks amazing and delicious, but now I have the added expectation of not eating as much so I can enjoy the cake. And how many carbs are in cake? Something tells me the Pelican Bay diner isn’t using a special cake recipe with a can of Sprite rather than sugar, eggs, and butter.
And here I thought I’d done a wonderful job by not doing the typical date thing and ordering a salad, but now he’s presented me with whether or not I can resist chocolate syrup filled carbs. And no woman in her right mind has ever been able to resist chocolate carbs.
“Can you bring out the dessert first,” he asks Trish right before she walks away.
“No problem, hun.”
Dessert first? What is this madness? Why do I love the sound of it so much?
“Why is your face a cross between excitement and horror as if I’ve killed your favorite kitten while giving you a million dollars?” Graham asks, watching me with sharp eyes.
There’s absolutely no way I can tell him I’m excited because now I don’t have to figure out whether I can eat dessert, but horrified because I won’t be able to eat another carb for the rest of the month. “I’ve just never known anyone who orders dessert first.” The lie comes quickly. Cammie’s friendship is paying off.
He smiles, not at all suspecting I’m a carb fiend. “When presented with molten lava cake, I always eat dessert first.”
Put another check mark in the gentleman box. Or at least possibly the man of my dreams. Who needs a prince when you have somebody who orders chocolate first?
“I’ve never considered it.” Probably because getting dessert at a restaurant wasn’t an option growing up. My parents didn’t have enough money to take us any place beyond McDonald’s, and if they did, we certainly weren’t ordering an overpriced dessert. Even if it had chocolate coming out of the middle of chocolate.
Graham smirks, having his own private memory. “We were only allowed to do it when my father was on another deployment. Every time he left, my mother would take us to a restaurant to eat all the desserts. As a kid I thought it was great, but now I realize she was trying to hide her own emotions over my father going away and possibly never coming back.”
It’s such a small peek into his life but so telling. “Your father was in the military?”
He nods. “Army. For a while I thought he wouldn’t survive when I joined the Navy, but when I passed SEAL training, he was in the audience, the proudest father there.”
“Did you move around a lot?”
As a child I always wanted to go new places and see the world, but Southern California’s expensive, and besides the couple of trips across the border to Tijuana, the biggest adventure was when I moved to Pelican Bay.
“Extensively. We even did a few trips overseas. We never stayed anywhere longer than a year or so.” It sounds fun and amazing, but there’s something about his tone that hints at the fact it wasn’t all that great for a small child.
Maybe that’s why the boy who never had a home turned into the man who isn’t searching for one.
“How are you surviving this winter coming from Southern California?”
My eyes display the truth when they widen, and my head shakes back and forth in dismay. “Barely.” It’s only because the city is decorated so beautifully for the upcoming Christmas holiday. The trees wrapped in white stuff, twinkling lights up and down Main Street. The view of the frosty ocean and the chunks of ice battering against the sand take away some of the cold breeze and deep snow.
Our conversation turns to easier topics, like weather patterns, and before I’ve had time to put any more checks in his serial killer column, it feels as if his gentleman box is filled to the brim.
5
“You’re seeing the spy again?” Cammie asks, waving her hand in front of her face and pretending to fan herself.
“Shhh. Lower your voice. He’s not and yes.” If he were a spy, it’s not like he’d tell me anyway.
Her eyes narrow as she studies me and worry builds in my stomach. I love Cammie even though she gets me into trouble, but that girl could make money as a human lie detector. She has to be part gypsy because half the time she knows what I’m planning to do before I do.
“Is he blackmailing you?” She stares for a moment longer. “Because he is hot, but he caught you in his room with a B&E.”
“Me?” I whisper shout and then quickly look around to make sure there were no guests in hearing range. It can never get out that I was in someone’s room when I shouldn’t have been. The consequences would be dire for the bed-and-breakfast and myself.
“Where is he taking you?” she asks leaning against the front desk, her eyes never wavering. Human lie detector.
I shrug. “I have no idea.”
We parted ways yesterday, and I expected something… anything. A good-night kiss or a nice hand shake, but he seemed comfortable to let me walk out on my own. I was ten steps away from him, headed back to the small apartment I occupy in the back of the bed-and-breakfast — a perk of working here — before he called my name and I spun in my tracks. For two seconds my heart beat fast as I imagined how wonderful his next words would be. An undying declaration of his love or a plea we’d see each other again. The seconds ticked away and with it my hope, but finally he opened his mouth and out came well-constructed words. “Can I see you again tomorrow?”
I gathered my breath, let a smile take over my features and replied earnestly with, “Sure.” That was it. Then he went to his room, I went to my apartment, and our night ended. So, he is not Prince Charming and I haven’t fallen into a fairytale romance novel, but he did ask to see me again.
I’m putting another check in the gentleman column.
“How can you go with someone and have no idea where you’re going?”
I shrug again. Isn’t that how dating works? Sure, I haven’t gone on a ton of dates but enough to figure out the general idea.
Cammie’s face falls,
and she looks at me as if I’m crazy. “How will I know where he dumps your body if you don’t even find out where you’re going?”
I choke on my own spit, covering my mouth so it doesn’t land on her face. “Cammie!”
“It’s the truth. Most attackers won’t take the time to move the body far. They dump you in the nearest field but now I won’t know what field is closest.”
I mentally switch back to my tally marks with the overwhelming evidence that Graham not a serial killer. “You watch way too much Investigative Discovery Channel.”
“It comes in handy if you’re ever in trouble.”
“If it looks like Graham is going to off me, I’ll ask him to pick a field close by so I’m easier to find.” The clock ticks away, the seconds getting closer and closer to my inevitable date, and my stomach fills with a quickening uneasiness. Not just from the images of my body lying in a field dead and helpless, but the excitement of going on another date with the not spy and hopefully not a serial killer.
My phone dings with a message as I hand over the final paperwork to Dwight with still no sign of my date for the evening.
It’s an unknown number text and I’m curious enough to swipe the screen and read it.
UNKNOWN: Can you meet me at the bakery?
I guess who it’s from immediately, but even so a small worm in the back my head picks up about Cammie’s field warning. I type back a hasty text with a yes and leave out the front door, waving to Dwight’s scowls behind the desk.
The Pelican Bay bakery or so aptly named Bakery by the Bay is situated on a corner of Main Street. It’s a few short blocks from the bed-and-breakfast and I make the walk speedy hampered only by the cold weather.
Out front Graham waits, a long peacoat buttoned up at his chest and a dark knit hat covering his ears and dark hair. A dusting of snow flutters down from the top of the roof and I breathe in a healthy bitter cold breath of night air. How in the world did I get so lucky to be seen with someone like him? And it’s not just his good looks, but everything about Graham. It’s as if my body is drawn to his, the two of us floating side by side with my aura reaching out to grab hold of his.
Sweetest Risk Page 3
